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Faculty

Marc Arellano

Marc has a B.A. and M.A. in Literature from Carleton University. Having worked for the Department of National Defence and other Canadian companies like Norco Performance Bikes, Marc has extensive experience writing for industry in the fields of Technical Writing, Business Composition, and PR/Marketing. With the emerging new technologies in the electronic world, he is currently engaged with the process of developing courses on writing in digital environments, and the effects of culture on communication. An award-winning poet and filmmaker, Marc views film and video as opportunities for raising social issues and creating community.

His short documentary, (kə nā′dē ən), screened at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2008, placed in the top 10 in the CBC/Radio Canada International competition, Migrations, and received a U.S. premiere at the largest Hispanic film festival in the U.S., Cine Las Americas.

Marc’s last project, Strange Fruit: A Changing Landscape in The Central Okanagan, is a feature-length documentary that explores family-run orchards and the issues of land, labour and water. It received the Best Home Grown Film award at the 2010 Okanagan International Film Festival. It was also screened at the 2010 Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival in Toronto and was selected as an Official Finalist Award winner at the 2011 Las Vegas Film Festival as it “demonstrated superior and standout filmmaking and is deserving of special recognition.”

At a young age, he was chosen by the League of Canadian Poets to represent future voices at the Gala Reading in Association with the National Library's exhibition "Let us compare mythologies: Half a Century of Canadian Poetry in English." His most recent publication is Carta a mi padre (Letter to My Father) a book-length documentary poem. Marc is currently working on a new short documentary film, Spinning Green, which explores the possibilities of urban agriculture.

Mike Boulter has a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from Simon Fraser University. He has taught at SFU, the University of Winnipeg and Selkirk College. In his Master’s thesis he discussed hanging out in the darker caverns of the mind and meditating on Hermetic philosophy with H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and Carl Jung. He particularly loves reading Modernist poetry (any poetry, really) when he is not busy telling stories about Vishnu and Ganesha and Celtic fairies to his two daughters.
Mike’s interest in culture began with the way in which mythological symbols, born of the nether regions of the mind, over time grew to such stature that they were worshipped as divine realities. In a more earth-bound perspective, we can see how cultural symbols of all sorts manifest and become ideas which mediate our experience of the phenomenal world and colour our perceptions of reality. Mike’s sense of reality is greatly influenced by music, both academically and creatively. One of his great interests is how music influences culture, self-identity and community. He would like to build a jam-space in his garage.
Contrary to popular belief, Mike does have a practical side to him. He discovered that whether he is teaching literature or technical writing, he simply loves teaching. He has a deep, inborn respect for all beings (human, animal or incorporeal) and believes that every student he meets is worth spending time with so they understand the principles of a given course or curriculum. Even though he posts his office hours, he will usually talk to a student at any time, especially if they come bearing chocolate.

Marlo Edwards

Marlo has a PhD from McMaster University’s Department of English and Cultural Studies (2005), where she studied popular genre fiction and film—and specifically women with guns—after being inspired by Pamela Anderson kicking serious butt in the film Barb Wire. Her earlier degrees are a BA from York University and an MA from the University of Calgary, both in English Literature. And before all this Marlo was a high-school dropout. She sees both the wonder and the challenges of institutional education!

Marlo brings her love of narrative and imagination and all kinds of beauty and connection to the classes she teaches in cultural theory, film & television studies, and communications. She has been here since 2006, and feels lucky to spend her time talking with students about words and ideas, new and old.

Since 2008 Marlo has helped organize the annual World Community Film Festival (4 days of social-justice themed documentary films) here in Kelowna. She is committed to supporting local community groups and to maintaining campuses as public spaces.

Raluca Fratiloiu

Disenchanted with the rampant corruption and oligarchy of post-Ceausescu Romania, armed only with a BA in Journalism and Mass-Communication fromUniversityof Bucharest plus a suitcase full of high-heel shoes, Raluca charted a course to the New World to master communication at the University of Calgary.

On completing her MA, in a desperate attempt to evade repatriation to her Eastern European homeland, she fled to Montreal to study at Concordia University where she attained herPhD (Communication). Previous to Okanagan College, she taught public relations as an Assistant Professor at Mount St. Vincent University.

While her courses have traditionally focused on mass communication, media culture, public relations, rhetoric and discourse theory, in the last little while they included video game studies and digital media. In these more recent courses, she experiments with new teaching methods, including blogging and the use of open-source or free platforms for digital storytelling or basic game design. If you want to keep up with her projects, visit ralucafrati.com.

Jillian Garrett

Jillian Garrett has B.A.s in Art History and English Literature from the University of Calgary, and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Alberta. Her Ph.D. (which is still in progress through the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta) investigates the impact of digital technology on collective memory. Before arriving at OC, Jillian taught literature and composition at the University of Alberta and the University of Lethbridge. She is very happy to have left Alberta winters behind.

Besides a fascination with how collective and cultural memory is created and sustained, Jillian is also interested in the function of mass media in times of national crisis, the influence of the Internet in altering conceptions of public space, and the changing role of public art in urban culture. She is also a self-proclaimed television junkie, and is thrilled that her job gives her an excuse to feed this addiction daily.

In her role as teacher, Jillian believes that students find empowerment through knowledge. Her goal is for students to leave her classroom more confident, independent thinkers. She hopes that they will gain an appreciation for what it means to take responsibility for and control of their education; to Jillian, this is at the heart of a learner-centred pedagogy.

Edward Henczel(not Edward Henczel)

Edward Henczel holds a photojournalism certificate from Cariboo College, a Bachelors in Journalism from Thompson Rivers University and a Masters of Journalism from UBC. His thesis was a long-form narrative on special needs children and society’s need to label them.

Ed has worked as a reporter and editor for a dozen news outlets throughout North America, and his freelance stories and photos have appeared in more than 50 newspapers and magazines. Ed has also worked in PR and marketing for the public sector.

Ed is a huge fan of media theorists Friedrich Kittler, Noam Chomsky and Hunter S. Thompson and is thrilled his job lets him incorporate snippets of their philosophies into his classes. When he’s not teaching, he edits books, cycles and ponders the future of media, but not all at the same time. He previously taught journalism at Langara College.

Sharon Josephson

Sharon has a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Rhetoric and Composition, both from Simon Fraser University.

She is interested in the interdisciplinary study of language, in particular in relation to politics, race, gender, class, and culture. She would like very much to have lunch with Mikhail Bakhtin, Pierre Bourdieu, Kenneth Burke, Deborah Cameron, Michel Foucault, and Aristotle. She would like to drink wine with Wittgenstein.
Prior to joining the faculty at Okanagan College, Sharon taught writing at the University of Winnipeg, Simon Fraser University, and Douglas College. She is intensely interested in challenging entrenched, traditional approaches to writing instruction. To this end, she avoids lectures on the parts of speech and she refuses to read Eats, Shoots & Leaves. She loves teaching.

Amy Modahl

Amy Modahl straddles Visual Art and Linguistics by teaching and creating artwork related to both fields. She mostly teaches in Communications at OC, but has also taught Linguistic Anthropology and Fine Arts. As an artist she investigates power and deception communicated by human gestures, the beauty of syntax and morphology conveyed visually, and how material and form speak as a visual language (online portfolio: www.amymodahl.net). Amy sometimes works collaboratively, teaming with other artists to merge identities as impetus for a creative project. Under the guise of Officer Aj Dahl of AmCor Incorporated, Deception Detection Services, Amy and Lethbridge artist Corinne Thiessen (Officer Cload Idia) overwhelm visitors with an audio installation of directives while comically interrogating and drawing them to uncover lies and to quite seriously question state propaganda and surveillance. In this world of "Alternative Facts" AmCor is becoming ever more relevant: check out our services at www.amcorinc.net.

Colin Snowsell
Colin Snowsell holds a MA in Communications Studies from the University of Calgary. He is finishing a PhD through the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. An interview he did with Chuck Klosterman in Spin Magazine, on Morrissey and his Latino fans, now appears in Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006). Snowsell believes a line from that article – "Frankly, Snowsell doesn't know why all this happened, either" – continues to summarize his intellectual endeavours, but perhaps not in the way Klosterman intended. The more one reads and the more one thinks, the more questions one raises and that, Snowsell would like to remind Klosterman, is kind of the point of the whole thing. Presently, Snowsell is thinking about Canadian cowboy mythology, steakhouses and diners. Maybe he is just hungry.
Always, Snowsell thinks about Raymond Chandler and Los Angeles in the 1930s, the decline of Britpop, the appeal of shoegazing, Nightmare Alley, The Wire, the short stories of John Cheever, Swedish indiepop, and who would win in fights between: Gene Tierney and Linda Darnell; Alain Delon and Buck Owens; Montgomery Clift and The Clash; 50 Cent and David Caruso. Despite his fondness for pop culture, Snowsell still thinks Theodor Adorno was right.

Snowsell's essays have been published in This Magazine, Maisonneuve and PopMatters. Earlier versions of Snowsell have appeared on MuchMusic (in the role of Calgary alt-indie impresario), obtained a journalism diploma from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and worked in corporate communications at Greyhound Canada's head office in Calgary.

Prior to joining the faculty at Okanagan College, Snowsell taught professional communication at the University of Saskatchewan.

Stacey Tabert

After working, studying and traveling overseas since graduating from the University of Victoria with a BA in English Literature and Environmental Studies (1996), Stacey has returned to the Okanagan Valley where she grew up. In fact, Stacey did her first year of university transfer courses at the KLO campus in 1991-92 before moving to Vancouver Island, and is ecstatic to be back on campus now teaching Professional Writing in the Department of Communications.

Stacey lived and studied in Australia and has a Doctor of Education (Education for Sustainability) from Central Queensland University (2010) as well as a Master of Education (TESOL) from Charles Sturt University (2001). She has taught a variety of English as a Second Language (ESL), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), Business English, Communications, Career Preparation, and Research Writing courses at universities in Australia, Bhutan, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Qatar, and South Korea; and, feels fortunate to have been able to experience so many amazing cultures, languages, landscapes, religions and education systems.

In addition to teaching, Stacey is passionate about the environment and sustainability issues and has contributed to a variety of research projects and publications in the fields of program evaluation, social and environmental impact assessments, land-use changes, stakeholder consultation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, and equity in response to climate change. Her Goodreads recommendation is E. F. Schumacher’sSmall is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered.

Michael Saad

Michael holds an Honours Diploma in Advertising from Georgian College, a BA in Communication Studies from Laurentian University and an MA also in Communication Studies from the University of Ottawa. His thesis studied the role of narcissism in relationship development through Facebook.

Michael has an ever-evolving interest in digital social media. His research interests include identity development, relationship dynamics and the evolution of Barry Wellman’s social tie theory. He is fascinated with Rocci Luppicini’s concept of the technoself, specifically examining how people’s digital identity is increasingly influencing their decisions in real-world communication.

Prior to teaching at OC, Michael taught Advertising, Public Relations and Communications at Canadore College and Nipissing University. He also worked extensively in communications and stakeholder relations in the post-secondary and non-profit sectors. Outside the classroom, Michael enjoys fitness, carpentry, entrepreneurial endeavors and being disappointed by the Blue Jays. He hopes to never stop learning.